Dalit women activists equate India's untouchability with apartheid during campaign in nine US cities

By A Representative
In a strong effort to internationalize the view that the treatment meted out to Dalits in India should be treated on par with the apartheid, a delegation of the All-India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM) has wrapped up its tour of nine American cities in order to highlight centuries old "oppression" suffered by India's “untouchables” within the Hindu caste system.
Consisting of well-known Dalit activists Anjum Singh, Sanghapali Aruna Lohitakshi and Asha Kowtal, the delegation went around the US under the banner of #DalitWomenFight, highlighting how over 260 million people in India today, with more in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, have been victims of the type of treatment that Blacks in the US have had to suffer.
AIDMAM representatives, during their visit, reportedly shared stories of how Dalit people have traditionally held occupations considered “ritually impure” — which include "manual labour like removal of waste, leatherwork, butchering, and even musicians whose instrument involves an animal’s flesh (like a drum)".
The delegation said the "atrocities" committed against Dalit people are staggering even today, as on average a crime against a Dalit person happens every 18 minutes, and three Dalit women are raped every day. Thirteen are murdered every week. A majority of these crimes are committed with impunity.
“We realize this is a battle that we cannot win by ourselves,” said Asha Kowtal, general secretary, AIDMAM, explaining the reason for the tour. “The movement needs global solidarity from oppressed communities across the world and allies who will stand with us in this struggle to overhaul institutions reeking of caste and patriarchy.”
Taking note of the delegation, blogger Gabriel Teodros wrote in http://www.seattleglobalist.com how a conversation with the Seattle South Asian Solidarity Alliance and #DalitWomenFight shockingly highlighted certain "firsthand accounts" of the atrocities that have been going on in India, including a story about a woman who was murdered and tortured with cigarette burns all over her body.
"Her death was ruled a suicide — an eerie similarity to what happened to Sandra Bland in Texas", commented the blogger.
Manisha Mashaal, field organizer with AIDMAM, pointed how she was "enraged" by the case a young woman who was gang raped and murdered in Haryana on her way to school.
"This story sent shivers down my spine... There was so much silence around the case of a young Dalit student being brutally murdered in her own community", Mashaal said, adding, "We organized family and community members to the local police station for the results of the autopsy reports. We were treated with so much disrespect at the police station, where officers kicked the dead body of the victim."
New York based filmmaker, musician and transmedia artist Thenmozhi Soundararajan showed parts of her documentary she is working on after her two years of her journeys with grassroots leaders.
“I think in places like Seattle, we’re dealing with ‘Caste 2.0’ where we’re seeing a preponderance of highly educated upper-caste Indians joining these massive tech companies, and it’s like the worst of all worlds because they are financially wealthy, incredibly arrogant and they try to recreate casteist structures within their companies and inside the South Asian institutions of Seattle", she said.

Comments

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

India’s green energy push faces talent crunch amidst record growth at 16% CAGR

By Jag Jivan* A new study by a top consulting firm has found that India’s cleantech sector is entering a decisive growth phase, with strong policy backing, record capacity additions and surging investor interest, but facing mounting pressure on talent supply and rising compensation costs .

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Beyond sattvik: Purity, caste and the politics of the Indian kitchen

By Rajiv Shah A few week ago, I was forwarded an article that appeared in the British weekly The Economist . Titled “Caste and cuisine: From honeycomb curry to blood fry: India’s ‘untouchable’ cooking”, it took me back to what I had blogged about what was called a “ sattvik food festival”, an annual event organised by former Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta.

Search This Blog